Text | Wu Ruiyi
Founded in 2019, the Zhuhai Chinese Orchestra is currently one of the youngest Chinese orchestras in China. Since October 20, the orchestra has carried out a 10-day "Tribute to the 22nd Anniversary of Macao's Return to the Motherland and the Establishment of Hengqin Guangdong-Macao In-depth Cooperation Zone" Zhuhai National Orchestra Jinjing Exhibition and Performance Activity in Beijing, and within 10 days, the orchestra has launched three consecutive Zhuhai local repertoire performances. On October 29, the large-scale national symphony suite "Cuckoo and Golden Lotus" held at the Concert Hall of the National Centre for the Performing Arts was one of them.
The suite is based on the deep love of Zhuhai and Macao in the 22 years since Macao's return to the motherland, and is composed of 14 vocal suites and ethnic orchestras, starting from the opening overture "Tribute - 1999", "Sail Shadow", "Water Language", "Hehuan", "Flower Dream", "Tide Sound", "Green Shade", "Flying Rainbow", "Wave Running", "Lotus Heart", "Harmony Rhyme", "Dianjing", "Pilot" and other sub-songs continue to be played, and the epilogue "Tribute - 2049" echoes with the opening chapter. The whole work strives to illustrate the harmonious picture of the people of Zhuhai and Macao with brotherhood and integrated development after Macao's return to the motherland, in the great practice of "one country, two systems" and under the background of the construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and the Hengqin Guangdong-Macao In-depth Cooperation Zone in the form of a combination of vocal suites and national orchestral music. In terms of the main creative team, zhu Hai, the planner and writer, was specially invited to compose the lyrics, the composer and vice chairman of the Chinese Musicians Association Meng Weidong composed the music, and Li Fubin, professor of the Xinghai Conservatory of Music and director of the Department of Chinese Music, served as the composer and instrument of the suite, and was directed by Liu Sha.
In recent years, in the narrative trend of "telling the story of China in the language of national music", the national orchestra has gradually become a window and business card for disseminating and publicizing local culture. A series of plays with strong local characteristics and customs, writing about the city's historical and cultural accumulation and contemporary development, came into being. On top of the aesthetic function of showing the "pleasantness" of music through stage art, the orchestra also starts from the artistic development law of "literary changes are stained with the world, and the rise and fall is related to the chronology", firmly grasps the relationship between music and the times, and highlights the function of music as a superstructure to reflect social ideology. This "Cuckoo and Golden Lotus" is a microcosm of the current development trend of the Chinese orchestra.
In order to express the theme of the era of "Zhuhai-Macao Family", the work selects the genre of "National Symphony Suite", combining national orchestral music with vocal music. From the perspective of creation, the suite covers a relatively rich range of forms, including national orchestral performance, mixed chorus, trio, male and female duets, male and female solo singing and other singing methods. Meng Weidong plays the lyrical characteristics of his melodic writing, and pays attention to the display of different timbres and sound regions. Zhu Hai's words show that as the core creator, he has tempered a refined and highly generalized expression in many national literary and artistic performances, and the lyrics and songs match and show a high degree of fit. The Beijing Philharmonic Male Vocal Choir and the Central Conservatory of Music Choir also reflect the standards of first-class choirs in choral works such as "Sail Shadow" and "Tide Sound". In the use of genres, the orchestra tries to make a breakthrough in the traditional national orchestra form, and the concept of "pluralistic collision" it upholds is not only the general choice of many chinese orchestras in the process of increasingly grand narrative content, richer art varieties and more advanced stage technology in recent years, but also echoes the initial characteristics of the integration of "music" and "song and dance and music integration" thousands of years ago, reflecting the objective inevitability of artistic development from synthesis to differentiation to synthesis. Whether in content or form, "Cuckoo and Golden Lotus" shows the era responsibility of the Zhuhai Chinese Orchestra and its opening system of placing national music in the art system, exploring its possibility of expanding to a new world. From the "fusion" of this performance, it can be seen that in the face of the majestic musical temperament of the work and the strong resonance of the sound resonated by the chorus of more than 100 people, the national orchestra tried to support and respond to the effect of equal amounts of harmony, so in the orchestration, the percussion, blowwind, these volume-dominant parts were used in a key manner, and at the same time, in order to enhance the sense of thickness, the cello, double bass, etc. were also focused on coloring. However, in the face of the rich connotation of "symphony", in the face of the differences in the characteristics of the national orchestra and the bel canto chorus in terms of sound color, sound thickness and other aspects, how the national orchestra needs to present this "symphony", how to effectively mosaic the "symphonic" and vocal suites, in order to break the theme of "national symphony suite", so that the functionality and artistry of the work are unified, which need to be repeatedly considered in the process of from creation to stage, and then from stage feedback to creation.
"The Cuckoo and the Golden Lotus" is a tribute of the Zhuhai National Orchestra to the 22nd anniversary of Macao's return to the motherland, and is also the young orchestra's praise for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. For the orchestra, this work, which is infused with the vitality of the Bay Area and the deep feelings of Zhuhai and Macao, is a landmark.